


The Incongruity of Softness

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: (And yes‚ the 'Graphic Depictions of Violence' tag is warranted‚ albeit also for a flashback scene), (occur in the story's past‚ but are described), Crew as Family, Friendship, Gen, Major Character Injuries, National Praline Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 18:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11296620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: Prompt: I don't see nearly enough writing about Chakotay building things. Can you write something about him in a wood shop for me?  Or making something with his hands?The circular saw bites through the soft pine-like wood, spraying aromatic sawdust across thefloor. The tarp spread over the carpet under my makeshift workstation shows off the pale specks like stars, except in the places where my feet have scuffed through the drifts as I work. If the tarp were a galaxy, my footprints would be...black holes? Exceedingly large black holes bigger than Federation space?Oh, well. No analogy’s perfect.





	The Incongruity of Softness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Helen8462](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helen8462/gifts).



The circular saw bites through the soft pine-like wood, spraying aromatic sawdust across the floor. The tarp spread over the carpet under my makeshift workstation shows off the pale specks like stars, except in the places where my feet have scuffed through the drifts as I work. If the tarp were a galaxy, my footprints would be...black holes? Exceedingly large black holes wider than Federation space?

Oh, well. No analogy’s perfect.

I have eight front chair legs cut--a much simpler process, merely trimming the ends of the pre-cut alien wood--and twenty-one days to cut these angled back legs and all the other pieces, and assemble the four chairs and their matching table. I could have made any other gift for the newlyweds, of course, any of them less time-consuming, but I wanted to do this. A family should have some furniture that isn't replicated.

Kathryn has been making a lace table runner, knitting the delicate pattern by feel. Sometimes as I pass by her door, I can hear her voice querying the computer about stitch count or pattern rows, and the calm tones of Voyager’s response. At our first dinner back in the mess hall after the mission, I told her--Kathryn, not Voyager--that she should save her time. After all, what crewmen would  _ dare  _ use a tablecloth made by their captain? She just laughed and told me we should visit the newlyweds for dinner, and then they’d have to.  _ And when we’re there, Chakotay, you spill just a drop, just a  _ drop  _ of red wine on it. Then it’s no longer flawless, and they can use it when they have a gaggle of fat, rambunctious babies and they’re all throwing mashed carrots across the table. _

_ I don’t know. I don’t think I’d risk staining a gift from my commanding officer, even if my other commanding officer messed it up first. _

_ I would. If Admiral Nechayev gives me a table runner when we get home, I’ll use it. _

_ Well, Kathryn, you’re not just anyone. _

The last scrap falls from the end of the fourth back leg, and I blow the sawdust from it--more a ceremonial gesture than a practical one--and walk across the room to place it with the others. Every time I stand for a while, I forget the newly healed bones in my foot, and every time I start walking, the unevenness of my gait reminds me. Enough crew members were injured during the mission that, in consultation with the brides-to-be, we ended up postponing Mariah and Evelyn’s wedding by a month and a half, long enough to get repairs comfortably underway, and for most of the wounded to recover or at least get mobile again. And, last but not least, for some of us to catch up on our gift-making.

_ It hardly seems fair, _ Tom opined the other day, leaning his elbow on our table in the mess hall.  _ You two are pretty much obligated to make a gift for everyone who so much as gets a haircut on this barge. Births…weddings…milestone birthdays… The Captain made her future assistant a baby blanket way back in our old glory days in Kazon space, and now you’re both roped into making cutesy gifts for the next few decades. _

_ Some of us might consider that a stroke of luck, Tom,  _ Kathryn drawled in return.  _ We have a chance to exercise our creative abilities, much as you do with your holodeck programs. In fact, I can’t help but notice that you’ve presented a new holonovel or setting to just about everyone who has had a milestone life event on board. _

_ Yeah, Tom,  _ chimed in Harry.  _ We can’t help but notice. _

_ Well, that’s different. I’m always trying to hone my skills, and if I  _ happen  _ to be working on something I think someone might like around the time they’re having their bash, I gift it to them. It’s not as though I suckered myself into Starfleet arts-and-crafts for the next few decades.  _ He leaned back, smirking broadly, and the young ensign sitting next to him stiffened, eyes widening as though she expected lightening to strike our table in retribution for a mere lieutenant calling his commanding officers suckers.

Kathryn, of course, simply rolled her eyes and laughed, and I had to duck my head to hide my amusement at poor Ensign Blain’s shock at the humor--or what passed for it--on display at the officer’s table. This was the first time she had sat at the same table as her captain, or at least, the first time she had intentionally brought her tray to the table where Kathryn was sitting for a full meal, as opposed to Kathryn sitting at her table for a few minutes as she made a few connecting-with-the-crew rounds.

I could tell, without a word from Kathryn, that the first time she went down to the mess hall after the mission, she was assuming she would be eating close to alone. That instead of officers and crewmen joining the table where she sat with whoever on the senior staff was free, they would be inclined to avoid her, consciously or not. I could tell by the resigned yet still tense set of her jaw; from the way she took her tray and retreated to the corner table, taking a chair facing out towards the viewport so that no one would have to look at her.

It was with fierce pride and gratitude that I watched as, instead, more crewmembers than ever joined her. The trend continued over the following weeks: crewmembers of all stripes, from the middle-aged officers who were Kathryn’s closest friends off the senior staff to young, mildly terrified crewmen and everyone in between. Some of them were awkward about looking at Kathryn, but to a person, they were tactful. And they were there. I was still walking with leg braces for the first few weeks while my crushed ankle bones regenerated, and it was at once surreal, touching, and hilarious to see two young lieutenants bounce out of their seats at once when I made to push my chair out mid-meal. Did I need more ketchup? Yamok sauce? Mustard a la Neelix?

Glancing at Blain that day, I found myself thinking of the long, tense week near the beginning of our journey when she’d been laid up in sickbay with an alien virus. It was before many tight friendships had had time to form onboard, and it was Kathryn who dressed in full bioprotective gear every day after her bridge shift and sat beside her very young officer, reading aloud and talking to her and dozing beside the biobed through the night.

Reaching the midpoint of the next back leg, I power down the circular saw and reach for the jigsaw. I can’t help but smile as I inhale the scent of the smooth, pine-like alien wood gained in that long-ago trade with the Tak Tak and watch the sawdust drift through the air like stars.

I killed five or six aliens on the away mission. At first, it was a firefight, dodging behind rocks and into sodden ravines, but we lost our weapons before long in the crush of bodies and the driving rain. After that it was a melee. Fists against skin, boots against teeth, bodies slammed into the mud and piling on top of each other. 

The first two I shot, phaser set to stun, but in a half-drowned bog, with the lead pellets of the enemy weapons flying through the air, that was certain enough death. The next four I fought hand-to-hand, and it’s the last one I wrestled in the mud, the one who got his hands around my throat after I’d been shot, that I’m not sure whether or not I killed. There was a  _ crack  _ even over the sound of the rain as I got a knee into his chest and pushed, but I didn’t see whether his eyes went glassy or not. I didn’t see anything. I woke up in sickbay.

Five or six. The  _ or  _ bothers me. I took lives, and would like to know how many. But to choose a number would also feel wrong, as though I were trying to make something as real as life and death falsely pat for the sake of something as immaterial as memory.

So. I killed five or six aliens on the away mission. Kathryn must have killed a similar number in the melee, and at least a dozen more when she crawled into the enemy shuttle’s engine and triggered the explosion that ended the battle and ripped half of her face apart.

The chair legs have all come out well so far, the silken wood with its beautiful streaks and swirls cutting as easily as the pine they smell so similar to. I run my fingers gently over it as I set the penultimate back chair leg in the corner, wondering at the incongruity of this softness in hands that so recently spilled blood and broke bone.

I wonder if Kathryn feels the same dissonance, carefully knitting her domestic wedding gift by feel as the biobandage and headgear wrapped around her face do their slow work, regenerating muscle and cartilage and restoring the majority of her sight. I wonder if she has made a count of the lives extinguished by her actions and under her hands; if she has  _ or’ _ s, and whether she finds those uncertainties a torment or a comfort or besides the point. I wonder if the table runner will smell like her when it is finished, coffee and perfume.

The final back chair leg emerges from the alien timber, and I blow away the sawdust, setting the saw back on my makeshift worktable. Front legs and back legs are all stacked in the corner behind the couch. I’ll begin assembly after dinner, or failing that, after tomorrow’s shift--Neelix is hosting a dessert celebration tonight in honor of an ancient Earth holiday he rooted out of the database, National Praline Day. He declined to mention what Earth nation it was that set aside an entire day to honor pralines, but one thing is certain: like all of Neelix's cross-cultural culinary ventures, tonight will be an experience to be remembered.

I suspect that Kathryn will kick my ass if I walk over and imply she might need help getting to the mess hall--aside from her habit of self-reliance, Starfleet ships’ computers provide plenty of well-honed guidance for blind visitors and crew. 

Still, we  _ are  _ both going to the same place. 

I ring the chime right as the door opens and she emerges, stopping on her heel just before she collides with me. 

“Come to escort your captain to dinner?” Her voice is amused, but with just a trace of warning.

“Come to ask if my captain will escort me.”

She chuckles and steps forward, reaching for me. Her hair swings near my face as she takes my arm, and I catch the scent of her, coffee and perfume. 

“You smell like pine.” She is smiling at me, her lips curving upwards as much as they can around the thinner, contoured bandages covering the bottom of her face. “Were you working on the gift again?”

“Just now. Were you?” 

“I was.” We step into the turbolift. “It’s relaxing, isn’t it? Working with one’s hands?”

“I’ve always found it to be.”

We ride in comfortable silence, which Kathryn breaks again as we step out of the lift. “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate that you make time for these things? Gifts; helping to coordinate celebrations? It’s not in your job description--well, not to this degree--and I appreciate you--” She pauses. “I could direct you to do a basic level of party planning, but...I could never  _ order  _ you to be the kind of XO who builds chairs for crewmen who are getting married. And I…appreciate that you are that kind of XO, Chakotay.” She’s already using her Captain Voice in preparation for dinner, all graceful humor and round speech-giving vowels.

“Kathryn, I think it’s safe to say that we both do more than a few things outside of our Starfleet regulation job descriptions.”

“Maybe so,” she allows with a light chuckle. Her footsteps abruptly slow as we approach the mess hall doors, though, and she halts just before they will sense out motion, turning to me and placing a hand on my chest.

“I’m glad we can do this,” she says softly. “I’m glad that, after everything, you’re still…we’re both still people who choose to do this.” With that, she turns back towards the doors and leads us through, gracefully unlinking her arm from mine as we mingle into the dinnertime crowd.

I’m glad too.


End file.
